Stage 14

The road

At the start

Monte Zoncolan

Contador took another minute and a half out of the whole field on the Grossglockner and now leads Nibali by 3:09 and Scarponi by 3:16. Today ends on the hardest climb in Italy: ten kilometres averaging almost twelve percent with ramps at twenty-two, steep enough that the team cars are sent away and replaced by motorbikes. The Monte Crostis has been struck from the route as too dangerous to descend.

How it was won

1. 1116 km to go

   Three men, ten minutes

   The Monte Crostis has been struck from the route as unsafe and its replacement pulled while the stage is running, so Rabottini, Tankink and Brambilla get more rope than they should. By the top of the Monte Croce Comelico they have ten minutes.

2. 264 km to go

   Liquigas take it on

   With 64.5 kilometres left the lead is still nine minutes. Then Liquigas-Cannondale move to the front for Nibali, and it takes them thirty kilometres to remove two of those minutes and the rest of the stage to remove the others.

3. 310 km to go

   The foot of the Zoncolan

   Ten kilometres to go, 4:22 to the break, and the road turns into a wall. The team cars are sent away and replaced by motorbikes, because nothing else will get up it.

4. 48 km to go

   The Spanish armada

   Brambilla tries at 7.5 kilometres. Rodriguez goes after him. Then Anton goes, and Contador goes with him, and Scarponi drags himself onto the back of it: four men climbing at twenty percent with their faces coming apart.

5. 54 km to go

   Nibali's last card

   Four kilometres from the summit Nibali attacks in front of a mountainside of Italians, and Contador is on his wheel before he has finished the acceleration. That is the whole answer, and everybody watching understands it.

6. 6At the line

   Monte Zoncolan

   Igor Anton has stayed just far enough in front of the argument behind him to win on the hardest climb in Italy, a day after promising he would hurt somebody. Nibali takes second, Scarponi third, and Contador loses nothing at all.

The result